Good day, bad day!

Yesterday started well. The weather was fine as I made my way to Shorne Woods Country Park where I was going to be running two sessions on customer service for the Kent Country Parks teams from several different venues.

The first session went well and I managed to keep my annoying, tickly cough under control. The teams came up with some good improvement actions. The second session went equally well, again with no coughing fits. More good improvement ideas were presented and I left having received some excellent feedback. A job well done!

It all started to go wrong when I made the decision to travel home rather than back to the office. I joined the car park called the M25 and found myself in about 40 minutes of stop-start traffic caused by a single lorry that had broken down. How can one broken down lorry cause so much chaos? Beats me!

So a later than expected arrival home but still a couple of hours left in the day to crack on with some work.

A quick check of the day's post sitting on the mat. Bill (oh joy), another bill (oh joy), letter from Student Finance England (uh-oh), letter from Audi Finance (hmmm...).

Leave the bills for now and look at the Student Finance letter. "Your daughter has applied for student finance and she needs you to provide information to support the application. Please fill in the attached form...". That would be the information I already supplied online over 2 weeks ago, then? A quick read of the form confirms that yes, it's exactly the same information they are asking me for. Wait a minute, it's 9 May and the letter is dated 14 April! Is this unconscious incompetence or a three week delay in the postal system? Give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. I'll call them to sort it out. Tickly cough still under control...

Ten minutes later and I have been through several different menus and been told by a recorded message that their officers are helping lots of people with enquiries at this time (why am I not surprised!). Imagine the thrill I experienced at hearing the recorded message suggest that I might like to deal with my enquiry by visiting their website...! Arrgghh! Does anyone else ever shout down the phone at recorded messages or is it just me? The system took its revenge as prolonged silence ensued and I had to accept after a couple of minutes that I had been cut off. Faint tickle in my throat...

I'm normally very calm and only realised I was having a bad time when my daughter arrived home and asked me if I'd been in the sun all day, to have such a red hue. I explained what had happened and she told me that yesterday she had received a letter telling her that all the necessary supporting paperwork has been received and that her student finance was finalised! No doubt about it, unconscious incompetence. And the really sad thing is, that having had dealings with this organisation for the last three years, I'm thinking that this is standard fayre - how low are my expectations!?

Back to the letter from Audi Finance. Having changed my car four weeks ago and agreed with my local Audi dealer that the last payment on the previous vehicle lease would be paid by them, I assumed that this might be confirmation. So with trembling hands I opened the letter: "Your bank has advised that the Direct Debit in our favour has been cancelled". "Please contact this office to confirm your intentions as to how you intend to liquidate the remaining balance". Liquidate the remaining balance? Plain English, anyone?

My daughter did call down from her bedroom at this stage to see if I was OK or had hurt myself in any way. I had a cup of tea to calm down and help clear the cough that had reappeared. I decided to call Audi Finance.

Surprisingly I got through to the right Department quite quickly and explained the letter. I explained what had been agreed with my local dealer and enjoyed a bit of revenge by advising them that they (not me!) would need to talk to the dealer to sort it out.

I was about to revel in my smugness when the polite female agent advised me that she could see a note on the file confirming the arrangement. "So why did you send me the letter?", I asked. "As soon as a Direct Debit is cancelled the system sends out that standard letter, despite what might be going on in the background", she said. My coughing started again.

As soon as a Direct Debit is cancelled the system sends out that standard letter, despite what might be going on in the background. So what we have here is a customer facing process that has been designed to benefit the organisation and not the customer. And which doesn't use plain English!

I made it clear that I was delighted that I had cancelled my Direct Debit in good time otherwise I'd have suffered financially too. "Oh, we'd have refunded you the money, Sir", came the reply. Is that good enough?

Nobody is perfect and this was just a bad end to the day for me. I don't have the energy to attempt to help Student Finance England improve its customer facing processes but I will pursue the issue with Audi Finance as I'm sure I can help them in some small way.

We don't do enough in this country to help businesses avoid annoying their customers. We need to point out to them when things aren't as they should be. Let's do more of it and help get service higher up the corporate agendas.